


It Gets Worse

by skepticallysighing



Category: Primal Fear (1996)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, aaron actually has did, mentioned rape and violence, things get bad and then they end, white swan story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28929180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skepticallysighing/pseuds/skepticallysighing
Summary: Sequel to "Cry About it."“They might not show it,” Roy offered. “But you gotta brace yourself for when they do.”And Aaron absolutely had not braced himself.ORThe rest of Aaron Stampler's story. Things go bad and don't get better.
Relationships: Aaron Stampler & Roy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	It Gets Worse

There was a woman who sat next to Aaron on the day of another blurry trial. He didn’t know her name, but she was small and pretty. Naomi, he’d find out her name was later, offered him a quiet, sympathetic smile as they sat together, and he found himself quite glad for her company.

Which was good to have on that day, because that day was the very one where the Miss Lawyer against him had a tape in her hand.

Though Dr. Vail leaned across him to whisper to Naomi, who leaned in to listen back, Aaron was still paralyzed in his seat when the black man with glasses and the blonde lawyer discussed the tape. The tape, and what had been recorded on it. He’d frozen up something terrible, feeling like a spotlight had shot across him, and he knew right then and there that everyone would know.

_ “They’ve gotta know, or else they’ll shoot the shit out of you,” Roy promised him, pacing while Aaron curled into a ball on his bed. _

_ “They duh-d-...no, they shuh-” Aaron couldn’t manage the words. Hysteria had seized his heart and wrung it out, and with a dirty secret like that splayed out in the open, how could anyone possibly relax and let go? _

_ “They  _ **_do_ ** _. And y’know what? They’re gonna be on your side when they see how the sick fuck r-” _

_ “No, they won’t, don’t say that-...the reverend was guh-g-... _ **_good_ ** _...he didn’t-...” and while Aaron choked apologies for his forever-lost father figure, Roy frowned down at him. _

_ “Well, no matter what, they’ll show that goddamn tape, and they’ll think you killed him ‘cause of it.” _

_ “But I duh-” _

_ “I know you didn’t, you fucking shithead!” Roy shouted, slapping the table and making Aaron wince. “You know that, I fucking know that!” _

_ Aaron couldn’t get the words out, but hysteria was turning into exhaustion, and crying all by himself in his headspace and worn him down. _

_ “Hey, come down from there now,” Roy murmured, sitting down on the bed so they were back at eye level. “You’re gonna make it out of this, you here me? They’re gonna see the tape, and after that, it’s gonna be easy pickings.” _

_ “I don’t want them to see the tape,” Aaron said quickly, eyes faded and all the way out of focus. _

_ “They might not show it,” Roy offered. “But you gotta brace yourself for when they do.” _

And Aaron absolutely had not braced himself.

He let his eyes fall shut and his lips close in, whispering  _ God _ just under his breath. He felt so repulsive between the two, so out of place. Mr. Vail whispered something for just him to hear, but he didn’t focus on it, because the the two professional people were still talking. The detective, the black man was the detective that Mr. Vail brought with for this case, but he didn’t remember his name. He didn’t know the woman’s name, because he had seen her everyday.

“-Linda Forbes,” said miss lawyer, and Aaron’s heart skipped at her pretty name and the half-memory of her sweet smile. She looked a lot like Naomi -- not much in the face, but the brown eyes and brown hair felt familiar. They looked soft.

“Yes, she was,” the detective agreed in a hard voice.

“Does it appear to you that the defendant was enjoying performing in this film with his girlfriend?”

“No, he does not.”

And though he didn’t cry out for Roy, Aaron still slipped out of his body. The body of Aaron stayed upright, but the heart and soul of the real Aaron slumped forward on the table and buried his face in his arms as he started to cry. 

He couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle it.

And he wasn’t built for handling much more.

  
  


When he saw Dr. Errington again, he felt a little comfort. She was on his side. She said he’d never kill anyone, and that would be the kindest thing he heard before he was called up to the witness stand.

Mr. Vail came up to him, looking different. There was something set in his face, something tight in his brows and his lips. Aaron didn’t know what it meant, feeling so small and helpless under a mean stare like what. He brought his perpetually-open lips together as if to ask  _ what _ \-- and to what he asked after, he wasn’t certain.

“Roy?” he whispered, looking over him as if trying to decide who he was talking to. “Aaron,” he added thoughtfully.

Aaron didn’t know what he meant, but something deep in his gut knew. His eyes flicked over to the blonde lady despite himself. She tilted her head at him in thought, and Aaron quickly looked down. Her name was Miss Venable. He had listened for it today.

And then Mr. Vail was talking to him, asking him about the arch-

“-bishop was like a fah-...father t’ me, I mean, I,” he looked down at his hands, like he always did when the words got stuck. The words always got stuck when he talked about the archbishop, because he still “-loved him very much.”

“Why did you love him?”

The question took a second to process in his mind, and when it did, he had to look away to shake off the creeping feeling on the back of his neck. “Wuh- _ why _ ?” 

“Uh-huh.”

He caught those icky feelings and exhaled a soft puff of air, concentrating on a spot of the floor as he considered it. “Well...he saved-saved...saved my life.” He had. “I mean, he was the only person eh- ( _ it felt emotional to say _ ) -ever that truh- ( _ because it was the truth _ ) treated me like I was worth anything-”

Mr. Vail grabbed his mic, and Aaron flinched upright and wide-eyed, panic rushing through him.

_ “Stop your whining, you little girl, be a man.” _

Had Roy said it? Had Mr. Vail said it? Was Mr. Vail making the same face Roy always did when he was shouting Aaron down?

_ Aaron felt like he had back after filming the last tape. _

“We have  **all** seen that tape you were in, Aaron, how’d it make you feel?” Mr. Vail asked, walking away. “Did it change your feelings about Archbishop Rushman?”

“No,  _ no _ , uh-uh,” Aaron insisted quickly, snapping back into the moment. “He was a wuh-  _ (was he lying? did he really believe this? _ ) wonderful man.”

“So you didn’t feel anger towards him about being forced to perform in that tape?”

“No, he-...” he didn’t stutter there, because no one had ever said it like that. Acknowledged that he had been forced to...perform? What a pretty word for a dirty act. “He did everything for me, there wuhn’t anything else I could do for him, and he ( _ didn’t give me a choice _ ) needed it.”

“Do you know someone named Roy?”

Aaron knew he didn’t really. Because even if he heard and felt Roy, Roy wasn’t real, he knew that deep down. He didn’t know what Roy was, but he certainly wasn’t someone.

“No.”

“You heard Dr. Errington’s testimony about what she and I saw at the jail.” And he had. But it didn’t make sense. What they saw was Aaron break down and start yelling, shouting, acting out someone else. Aaron remembered breaking down and starting to cry, sob, and curl up in Mr. Vail’s arms. “Pretty strange things, do you remember?”

“I heard what she said, but I don’t remember any of that.”

“No recollection?”

“Nosir.”

“Did you kill Archbishop Rushman?”

His eyes widened, and he looked down at his own hands. Even if Aaron hadn’t killed that man, these hands had.

“Nossir, I did not,” Aaron said softly, eyes all doed out as Roy and Mr. Vail together stared him down with hate and the wish to push him over the edge. Their faces had blurred together.

Why was Mr. Vail doing this to him?

“Thank you,” Mr. Vail said, and Aaron didn’t have a rock to stand on, still and anxious and confused.

_ No one loves you! You’re unlovable! _ something shouted from deep within. It wasn’t Roy. It wasn’t something much more deeply-rooted inside than that.

Miss Venable asked if Aaron wanted water, but she had called him Mr. Stampler. Aaron hadn’t recognized his own last name for a moment.

“No, no, no, ma’am,” he said quickly when he knew what he was here for again.

“You sure?” she asked, and he felt a strike in his gut when he found that Miss Venable’s face was a lot like Linda’s. Pretty, full of concern that could be real and could be fake. Her voice was mocking him, wasn’t it? She wanted to see him down on the ground, wanted to see him be hurt. Had she always looked like that, or was her face blurring with Linda’s like Mr. Vail’s blurred with Roy’s?

“Yuh-yes, ma’am,” he said, looking away, adding a soft  _ thanks _ into the microphone for her kindness, in case it wasn’t mocking and was true kindness. He never had been good at reading between the two, and Mr. Vail certainly was never consistent with either his cruelty or his kindness-

She had said something to him.

“Ah-I’m sorry, what’id you say?”

“Do you think he acted one way in public and another way in private?”

“No, no, no, I don’t think that.”

“Isn’t that why you underlined the Hawthorn passage?”

He looked at Mr. Vail, who was really just Roy, and Roy was staring at him like hate personified.

“Mr. Stampler?”

Eyes shot back to Linda. To Miss Venable. 

“No, I did not underline that book,” he said. Though he didn’t stuck up the sentence, his wavering voice didn’t sound all too convincing.

“You didn’t underline it?”

“No, no, ma’am.”

“And you didn’t  _ carve _ the numbers referring to that passage into his chest?”

“ _ No _ ,” his stomach wretched at the thought of blood, “No, ma’am, I did not, I told you-”

“You loved him.”

God.

She had gotten closer, when had she stepped closer?

“You loved him like a father.”

Yes, yes, he nodded a little. 

“Even though he made you and your girlfriend perform demeaning sexual acts for his own gratification.”

Aaron thumbed his own hand like the skin needed to come off. 

“No, you don’t understand, he-” mumbled Aaron, trying to find the words to explain how good the archbishop had been to him. He cast his eyes above, unable to meet Linda’s eyes on Miss Venable’s face. “There was no other way for him tuh-t’ cast out his own demons, he needed-”

_ “He needed to get off, Aaron! That’s what he was doing!” _

_ “What?” Aaron asked, looking to the corner where Roy had been the last day they filmed. Roy was there, and the courtroom was dissolving away. He was back in the archbishop’s room, curled up in the corner in his own unlovable body. Linda had been there to comfort him, but she didn’t. _

_ “He needed to get off,” she said softly, bitterly. “He doesn’t love you.” _

_ “He duh-d-..what?” Aaron had said softly, all blurry and exhausted. _

“ _ That’s what he needed you for _ , to perform like a circus animal,” Linda said, dripping into Miss Venable’s voice. Aaron looked around where the window would’ve been in the archbishop’s room, looking up at the judge, and back at Miss Venable. 

“That was your function!”

“No,  _ no!” Aaron argued, arms wrapped himself, refusing to believe it. Refusing to believe Linda. “No.” _

“Oh, Mr. Stampler, I’m gonna ask you straight, ‘cause  _ I am  _ **_tired_ ** _ ,” Linda said softly, “and I’ve had just about all I can take, and I wanna go home, a-and-” she was crying, “and I wanna wash my hands, and I wanna forget all about you and Archbishop Rushman.” _

Aaron rested his head into his temples, the overwhelm pushing and pushing at his heart.

“Did the Archbishop force you and your girlfriend and others to perform sexual acts while he watched, yes or no?!”

She was shouting, and his eyes were dipping back and forth between the archbishop’s bedroom and the courtroom.

“...Yes, he did, but-”

“Yes, yes, he forced you!” and her voice was so loud. And he was gonna cry, there were big, glassy tears threatening his eyes. “He forced you using a threat of expulsion from Saviour House and a life on the street with no heat, and no water, and no food! He put you in front of a camera! He made you take off your clothes -- and you don’t think that that’s another side?! Another face of a man we all thought we knew?!”

“ _ No! _ ” he tried, but she was right.

“You know what I would do if someone did that to me? I would  _ kill _ them. I wouldn’t hesitate.”

“No-” he’d never ever kill anyone. Never.

“I would stab him seventy-eight times with a butcher knife! I would chop off his fingers! I would slash his throat open!”

She kept going, and he could see it all, head shaking no matter how he tried to still it. 

“I’d cut numbers into his chest. I would gouge out his eyes, I swear to God!”

He went very still, and while Roy stepped into the husk ready to kill the woman who looked so much like Linda, Aaron dropped straight through the floor and somewhere into the past.

_ Aaron had known who Roy was right away. Roy hadn’t been his dad’s name, but it had been his dad’s face and voice. His dad looked like that, had moved like that, had chainsmoked cigarettes like that. But the think that separated Roy and Aaron’s dad was that Roy gave a fuck about whether or not Aaron survived. _

_ Roy shouted and made him feel bad, but in such a sweet and familiar way. He’d never truly push him too far. He’d call him a stupid, weak, whiny little girl, but he’d never force Aaron to accept what had happened.  _

_ Not till Linda had made the truth too apparent to Aaron, and he had no choice but to accept it.  _

_ “Roy?” _

_ “What the fuck do you want now?!” Roy shouted, whipping around with angry eyes. Familiar and safe ones. _

_ “The archbishop,” Aaron said quietly, and he must’ve been truly numbed out, because his word did stick when he spoke just this last time. “He raped me.” _

_ Roy looked over him, biting his lip tightly as he turned away from the courthouse, carefully approaching Aaron.  _

_ “Come here,” he said quietly, gruffly, offering his arms. _

_ Aaron carefully stepped into them, letting out a breath he’d been holding for lifetimes when he realized he said it out loud. He wanted to repeat it over and over again, never let the truth be suppressed down again, but he had said all he needed to and Roy had heard him. _

_ Safe at last, he cried his poor heart out. _

_ “Listen,” whispered Roy, low and exactly what Aaron needed right here and now. “You never deserved it. Never. What he did to you was evil, and you never, ever deserved it. But they heard you. You shared your story. You can rest now.”  _

_ He held Aaron close, and Aaron’s sobs slowed down as a heavy sleepiness began to overtake him. _

_ Aaron’s cheek might’ve been pressed on the cold, courtroom floor, or maybe against Roy’s chest. It didn’t matter. He was going somewhere else now, floating somewhere deep inside his own mind where no one would ever find him again. _

“So there never was a Roy?” Marty asked when Roy said those words and brought his whole world crumbling down.

“Jesus, Marty! If that’s what you think, I am disappointed with you!” he leaned into the bars, grinning something awful. “There never was an Aaron.”

That wasn’t true. There had been an Aaron. But Roy played the part perfectly. And Aaron was never coming back again.

**Author's Note:**

> currently working on a happy AU where Aaron doesn't kill anyone and instead gets therapy and an internship at Marty's place


End file.
